J7SC_Orion

Some FS2020 / 4K 400/400 terrain detail Vancouver NY

nothing unusual for DELL, though they're hard to out_Apple Apple re. proprietary nonsense that increases eWaste

...I suppose if I would have mounted them on top of each other rather than side-by-side (below for a two mobo, octo-GPU setup from eons ago), I could have called it a 'distro plate' - way ahead its time. ...given the space efficiency and the superb de-bubbling capabilities, for those who live near a microcenter, it might be worth per @Avacado 's post above to pick up a couple.

nice find...but no Miccrocenter in Canada (yet?)

...every once in a while, you see some, including 'new old' stock at smaller online retailers, but their online payment systems often are 'non-https' and there a few other question marks. I got enough for now, but the next time I see some @ fleabay at a decent price, I might just add to my collection as the micro-res v2 are very useful on both a temporary and permanent basis..

...there's an additional aspect coming into play these days that affects 'time spent' on tuning: As mentioned before, the latest crop of CPUs and GPUs are already much more 'binned & maxed' via boost algorithms (reminiscent of 'extracting the consumers' surplus in economics). There are still some other steps one can take, but basically, top-of-the-line RAM and a very extensive cooling system gets you 97% there - the remaining 3% are pure extra time and frustration . Thanks Bastiaan. Re. the EVGA 3090Ti FTW3 Ultra notification you received, since you already own 2x 3090 FTWs, I wouldn't bother, either. Besides, RTX4k (Ada Lovelace?) is already being tested out by vendors...turns out that the 3090 Ti PCBs are apparently pin-compatible... Re. HWBot and Elite league, HWBot is something a serious overclocker probably should do at least for a little while, though it is also a bit of a slippery slope re. time and equipment-purchase wise towards different cooling classes. Still, I am very glad I did HWBot and achieved many (though not all) my goals in the Elite league back in the day... But there's also a darker side to this, apart from time and $s - whether a retail purchase of a shiny new mobo, or a vendor-sponsored (usually white or grey) plain box with only an anti-static bag and a printed reminder of the NDA if received before initial release), it always felt so wrong to take one of these shiny new mobos and prep them right-a-way for sub-zero after a quick test on regular test-bench. That meant taking gobs of Vaseline and (very carefully) putting it into the CPU socket, followed by a heat-gun application so that it would flow into the nooks and crannies, while making sure not to negatively impact any one of the 2000+ little gold arms in the socket. Then more gobs of black LET (liquid electrical tape) all around the top and PCIe slots, some art eraser squeezed around the socket, blue shop towels rolled up and squeezed everywhere, finally followed by cutting out the neoprene sheets (I bought a lot of those at a dive shop, btw). Anyway, by the time the new mobo was prepped, it looked hideously ugly, and just like the previous hideous-looking gens. After all that mess, you got to wrestle with early beta bios, some of which could blow up the CPU while in bios (no kidding)...good thing they also supplied retail and/or ES CPUs....nothing of this was like the new ownership experience for a new build, with the joys of anticipation and planning a custom loop in a nice new case etc..

Hi folks - ...just a quick note on the Swiftech MCRES Micro Rev2 Reservoir... I bought five of them between 2013 and 2015 (quite cheap), and all of them are still in use, even at times in combination with bigger reservoirs for new complex water-cooling builds. First and foremost, their small size makes them much easier to mount, if not hide. Importantly, they also work exceptionally well when dealing with multiple blocks and pumps (ie. 3x D5s) in a given loop, loops with a lot of height differential and directional changes. The key seems to be that little 45 degree or so internal acrylic tab just above the inlet - it really makes bleeding a loop of air bubbles faster and far less frustrating than any other reservoir I have ever tried / used. One of the drawbacks of it relates to the 1/4 diameter barb fitting on the side. Apart from a chromed metal mounting bar (not shown), it comes with black plastic and also metal barbs, but the threaded holes in the inlets (on the left in the pic above) are just a tiny bit spaced too close together for regular compression fittings. Still, the overall advantages far outweigh those minor issues...though the Swiftech MCRES Micro Rev2 Reservoirs are very hard to find at the typical large-scale w-cooling retailers...not sure if they're out of production, but smaller specialty retailers still seem to have some. There's also the eBay option for used ones.

Haha - best part is that sometimes, the 'electronic mother in law' gets it wrong, and like mothers in law the world over, won't admit to that fact.

...there have been several somewhat substantiated rumours about a 43 inch LG OLED panel, but it is not yet in their own retail portfolio. Other vendors (using exclusively LG's OLED tech / panels) might offer it, but I don't have any experience with those. This > 'Unbox therapy' YouTube channel (over 18m subscribers) tests a lot of the bigger LG and Samsung display tech variants...same tech with tighter pitch would be in the 40 inch class.

...I'm going to sound like a LG sales person, but depending on budget and physical space, go for a 48 inch C1 or G1 OLED --- 4K 120Hz 1ms HDR Dolby Atmos etc. Potential drawbacks for that one include sheer size and cost, and the work area should be free of bright, direct light. For me, it was the single-highest impact update, supercharging the GPU investments. Both Raven_A systems' GPUs (3090, 6900) are connected to it (as well as a 40 inch VA Phillips for secondary work functions) and the picture is breathtaking... ...apart from OLED, there are also some nice micro-LED HDR 'true computer' panels available. Even older-gen LG IPS HDR televisions actually still work well (4K 60)...the 55 inch in another room is connected to Raven_B dual 2080 Ti setup for lounging on the bed and playing a quick round of games on a lazy weekend afternoon...

...we went for a drive in the mountains Easter Sunday as the weather was nice, then an atmospheric river came along...thawing the iced hood in a parking garage so I can actually open it later. Front parking sensors were also iced over, incessantly beeping.

...what about 'ye olde mobo cardboard box' temporary test-bench / case approach ?

...used to be much more on the bleeding edge when I was very active in HWBot; expensive not only in dollars even with vendor support, but also in time resources, bleeding edge / guinea pig tax re. new chipsets, beta bios and drivers... ...per earlier comment, having switched everything to 4K top-end monitors automatically meant high-powered GPUs. But no reason to go beyond that, and hope to run these setups for many years. Still, worth keeping an eye on PC-related supply chains not only re. Russia / Ukraine, but also re. Shanghai Covid impacts on largest container port in the world. Same applies to non-PC items...

...the best it can do for now with 1 Gbps router and switches. Building backbone and my mobos currently are at 2.5 Gbps, and I put in Cat8 wiring (also for future reference), but need to get a new router and switches first.

...being happy with the look and performance re. your current setup is in part what the original post was all about. Still, with your X470/PCIe 4.0, it is nice to know that you have some great upgrade options w/o breaking the bank, ie. the 5800X3D (see spoiler re. 40 game comp with 12900K Alder Lake). Because of the work-play nature (including compiling, rendering, encryption etc) of my setups, I prefer the 16 core / 32 thread CPUs, but for pure gaming upgrades, a 5800X3D or even 5900X gives you a great path. GPU-wise, waiting to see what the late-fall releases bring by NVidia and/or AMD makes sense, even if just for price drops on current gens.

Nice ! With water-cooling on a 6900XT reference style, you might have a lot of fun with 'MPT' (MorePowerTool) to unlock extra performance, w/o going overboard...

...with your 2700X in an AM4 socket, you do have some fairly painless upgrade options, if needed ! I typically upgrade any one of three sets of systems which make up my home-office setup every two to three years. This cycle, with 'Raven_A' which is a dual system in a single 'case', I needed to upgrade scope as well, meaning adding additional work capacity and oomph. That in turn meant 4K monitors which led to the need for GPUs that can drive those not only for computing-related work, but also play at decent fps. Fortunately, I got the 3090 and 6900XT at earlier MSRP (and no tariff) before it all went completely bonkers. I see zero-need to upgrade the GPUs (ie 3090 > 3090 Ti) now. Speaking of prices gone bonkers, while GPU prices are coming back down, I was shocked when I browsed Amazon and other specialty retailers for the type of water-cooling setup I built for Raven_A - some of it isn't available at all, or has a really long ETA, and overall, prices seem to be up by 30% or so compared to even 10 months ago. I'm glad I finished those loops (combined 2520x 63mm, 5x D5s, 50x 120mm fans for push/pull) before all this craziness which is forecast to get worse on the peripheral side (re. China issues) in the near future... I still have GTX 980s in an older setup and really like them, but yeah, your 5900X / 3080 Ti should have some staying power. If you have a decent monitor to pair those with, you're all set for years. ...FS2020 is 'less than optimized' but slowly getting better (and so it should be with all those multi-GB patches !). But for all its flaws, it is my fav, along with free-roaming in Cyberpunk 2077. CP2077 seems to have the best ray-tracing 'impact', rather than just a label stuck on after the fact. Ride 4 is also a blast, and I don't mind Forza Horizon 5, though for me, FH5 is 'second-tier' in the fun department.

Perhaps it is a bit of an odd post, but in a week when I slurped up 12900KS and 5800X3D reviews, with an extra sprinkling of 3090 Ti and rumours of the 6950XT, I realized that I do not long for any of those things whatsoever. Granted, the listed items are mostly refreshes and variations on existing offerings I already have - and who knows, Raptor Lake, Zen 4, RTX4K and RDNA3 may yet peek my interest. But for now, I'm blissfully happy re. the systems in my home-office for work and play, and the industry might be unhappy if there are too many of me in that 'zone'... To explain, we had some weird, for-us-rare thunderstorm weather over the last week - ideal 'flying' weather for my FS2020 FlightSim set to 'real weather and air traffic'...it is kind of strange to see the actual weather raging outside on one's screen, ditto for air liners in the 'real sky' while also seeing them on the screen (said airliners and passengers may not have enjoyed the weather as much as I did...). Anyway, it was close to two hours of FS2020 at 4K ultra, and as I had HWinfo minimized in the system tray, I checked afterwards re. MHz and temps...turned out the 5950X had hit an effective clock of 5040MHz on several cores (FS2020 only uses a few) while the 3090 Strix was around 2205 MHz with a peak temp of 38 C for the GPU. The GPU wasn't even maxed (see insert below), but still delivered consistent, high fps...The systems have extensive water-cooling and that helps a lot not only on speed but re. lack of noise and heat-soaking, especially with the latest crop of CPUs and GPUs with boost algorithms that use temp as a major determinant...so that is one conclusion: Max out what you got first, rather than just always upgrade to the latest and greatest. ...Certainly, a new 5800X3D or 12900KS with a shiny new 3090 Ti or 6950XT may (or may not) be faster, but it really is about the apps I run at the end of the day...that, plus the visual experience. Per below (lower right screen), I invested in a LG C1 48 OLED just shy of a year ago, and it has done more for my enjoyment than any other upgrade in recent memory. The visual quality is off the scale, the response rate is near-perfect, the pixel pitch tight and it transforms games such as FS2020, Cyberpunk 2077, ForzaH5 et al into a completely different experience. I sit about two feet away from that C1 monitor in a room w/o direct lighting which is just about perfect, never mind the audio quality that thing emits. Sometimes, I get up at night and just watch 8K/4K HDR YouTube aerial vids - it really feels like you're floating above the various cities, mountains, valleys and oceans. So that is another conclusion: The enjoyment of the latest hardware is only as good as the weakest link in the chain, especially the one which is the direct major interface between 'human and machine'. All I really want from my current setups and all the extra cooling I built in is to power the visuals to the max while being whisper-quiet, for hours on end (beyond the daily productivity uses). In prior years, when upgrading a CPU/GPU combo, the benchies would show the new-found speed, but watching it all on the same older 'trusty' monitor as before sometimes raised the question what the upgrade investment was really worth. So it is nice to read all the reviews about the latest 'must haves', but especially in the times we live in, it is equally nice to be content, even if the industry doesn't like to hear that term. Speaking of contentment, Happy Easter to you all.

Generally, LM tends to stay 'flexible' for several years, in my experience. However, I had an extra NEVER opened Coolaboratory LM tube still in its original, sealed packaging that I finally opened six years after I got it - I was solid / hard metal by then.

...right on...Zen4 also shapes up to be quite a monster ! For now though, I'm blissfully content in my Ravens nest

Nice. Are you going to w-cool the FE / 3080 Ti ?

As long as RGB can be set to electric blue, the rest doesn't matter I do wonder though about the 240 mm thin-rad Neptune w-cooled version. I run a 3090 with 475W-1kW vbios at 2250 MHz and beyond, and it takes some serious cooling to keep it nice and cool and clock up to that level w/o heat-soaking. I would not want to cool those things with anything less than a dedicated 360x60 dual-core rad, preferably more.

...yeah, but just think how much you can $ave on water-cooling gear per year, for just a 'little' effort On a similar note, a friend of mine owns a wholesale fruit an vegetable business...his warehouse has two 'cold rooms' at 400 square feet each. They can be cooled down all the way to about -4 C, though they usually are at around +5 C. While I have his permission, I have yet to try out some oc'ing in those...the systems I build are simply too big and heavy to safely transport the 5km or so.

...I don't know that specific block, but if you have a spare compression fitting (ie. 1/2 id), they have an o-ring on the thread side which has worked for me before as a replacement for another purpose.

...that pic was from my work space - but I haven't used that pot in a while; best to employ them when a new setup is on a test-bench.